The Best Guide

This year has seen a real sea-change here at Rushes, with our old long form TV CG/VFX department moving over to make way for a new commercials-centric operation, headed by Andy Nicholas, with Norra Abdul Rahim appointed as Senior Exec Producer.

Combined with Rushes established Flame talent – this is a serious VFX offer, ready in 2014 to rise to every challenge and tackle the most ambitious jobs.

So…. our Rushes Christmas message this year is a true team effort, harnessing together the Flame and CG department to animate a CG character into live action.

The film combines skittish naivety (hmmm – did I say nativity?) with a bright-lights big-city vibe; we see a deer straying into town, gate-crashing a festive party before being spooked by a siren and diving in through Rushes front door – a safe haven amidst the madness!

There’s a cunning plan behind all this of course; the film showcases the creativity and versatility of our Rushes VFX team as shoot supervisors as well as technicians – available to help you with your project. Craig Travis, lead animator, also enjoyed the challenge and said “it was a great chance to bring the deer character to life by observing the subtleties of animal behaviour. We wanted to add subtle humour to its performance without compromising reality”.

The film also required us to composite the CG deer character into a variety of lighting conditions, both day and night, interior and exterior. Some shots like the opening scene use very natural lighting whilst others needed interactive lighting from streetlights, shots and signs.

The project was achieved entirely within Maya, and used Nuke and Flame to composite the scenes and apply the final polish to the film.